Prof.DanielIsenberg

Speaker Profile

Daniel Isenberg joined Babson Global as Professor of Management Practice in July 2009 where he established and heads the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project to help leaders around the world create the policies, structures, programs and cultures that foster entrepreneurship. In June 2010 Harvard Business Review published his 'How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution', as the 'Big Idea' feature article, following his seminal Harvard Business Review piece, 'The Global Entrepreneur' (2008), and preceding 'Entrepreneurs and the Cult of Failure' (April, 2011). His Harvard Business Review blog on entrepreneurship has attracted over 100,000 readers, and he is a regular entrepreneurship blogger for the Economist, Huffington Post, and Forbes.

Dan has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Insead, Reykjavik, Theseus, and the Technion, and has been an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and angel investor. Dan has addressed or advised senior policy groups in Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Israel, Colombia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Puerto Rico, Argentina, China, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Chile. Dan has worked on entrepreneurship policy with the G20 (YES 2011), World Economic Forum (China, Davos), and has advised the White House on StartUp America. Dan teaches in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government executive program on Innovation for Economic Development.

Prior to joining Babson in July 2009, Dan served for 11 years on the Harvard Business School faculty: From 2005 to 2009 he taught in the Entrepreneurial Management unit, where he developed the popular course International Entrepreneurship, publishing 27 cases on global entrepreneurs. Dan also taught in the required first year course, The Entrepreneurial Manager, and designed and led HBS's new India and Israel International Immersion Programs on entrepreneurship. From 1981 to 1987, Dan was in the Organizational Behavior unit, where he taught Organizational Behavior and Managing Organizational Effectiveness. During this period, Dan conducted research programs in two areas, human interaction in small groups and managerial cognition, which resulted in his first feature Harvard Business Review article, 'How Senior Managers Think' (1984) and 'The Tactics of Strategic Opportunism' (1987), as well as scientific publications in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Academy of Management Journal, etc. Dan has been a consultant to numerous multinationals around the world.

Before and in the interim period (1972 to 1976; 1987 to 2004), Dan lived in Israel and was founding CEO of Triangle Technologies, which executes cross-border transactions between Japanese companies and non-Japanese technology companies, and has concluded over 100 transactions. During that period Dan helped establish two venture capital funds and was general partner in one of them. From 1987-1989 he created a course at the Technion called Technology-Based Entrepreneurship, directed the Tefen Entrepreneurs Program with Stef Wertheimer, and also directed the Technion Entrepreneurial Associates with MIT Professor Ed Roberts. Dan has served as director of several private and NASDAQ-listed companies. Dan speaks and consults frequently on global entrepreneurship and has been quoted in Fortune, the Financial Times, Economic Times of India, Business Week, etc.

In 1981 Dan received his PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University under the mentorship of Robert Freed Bales. Dan maintains homes in Boston and in his home town of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is divorced with four grown children. Dan enjoys salsa dancing (On2), jazz, cooking, collecting wine, and not-catching-fish (at which he excels); nevertheless, he is most passionate about spending time with his kids (one of whom is an entrepreneur) and being surprised by what entrepreneurs around the world can accomplish.